It is customary for one to identify the brand or the maker of a vehicle from its carried medal- or panel-like symbol representing a vehicle's trademark or a manufacturer's mark. However, in the dark, a conventional symbol cannot be identified unless being properly exposed to light. There exists a type of so-called self-illuminating symbol, in which a symbol is luminously displayed for arising an ornamentation effect as exemplified in a U.S. Pat. No. 4,443,832 issued to Kanamori et al. Implementation of a self-illuminating symbol is costly because it requires not only expensive new stamping dies for making a new hole on a vehicle's body panel to accommodate this type of self-illuminating symbol therein, but a new light source for arising the ornamentation effect.
There are instances in which a symbol is simply attached onto the light cover of a vehicle's taillamp cover or front light cover. These instances can be classified into two categories as represented by the following typical examples. Most of the instances belong to the first category in which a symbol and its field are in a form of a panel-like light-impenetrable plate and thus cannot be luminously displayed, for example, the symbol of Oldsmobile on the taillamp cover of a 1989 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera sedan.
In the second category, a vehicle light cover is made to consist of a light-impenetrable symbol, and a light-illuminable field and a light-illuminable outer background both contiguous to the light-impenetrable symbol. A typical example of this category is the symbol of Mercury attached to the light cover located at the front center of a 1991 Ford Mercury Sable sedan. The symbol of Mercury is basically in a form of skeleton or framework with a metallic-shinning surface; and, the field of the symbol has a color and luminous intensity identical to the outer background. This offers no illumination pattern corresponding to the shape of the symbol of Mercury for two reasons. First, the symbol itself is light-impenetrable. Secondly, the bright light emitting from the light bulb behind the light cover brightly illuminates the field and the background in the same color, therefore rendering the symbol unrecognizable from the surroundings.
A further typical example of the second category is the symbol of Oldsmobile seen on the taillamp of a 1991 GM Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme sedan, which is made of a cheap black imprint rather than an expensive metallic framework as used in the Mercury example. As proportionally depicted in FIG. 1, taillamp cover means 100 comprises a light-impenetrable black symbol 101 having a pattern corresponding to the trademark of Oldsmobile that does not allow light rays to pass therethrough. a light-illuminable red field 102 and a light-illuminable red outer background 103. The inner surface of taillamp cover means 100 is finished in a manner such as to diffuse light into a pattern consisting of alternatively arranged bright-red regions 104 and the dark-red regions 105 with a size as proportionally shown in FIG. 1. This prior art fails to luminously display the symbol of Oldsmobile for three reasons. The first is that the size of the dark-red regions 105 being in the range of 0.4-0.5 cm is larger than the width range of 0.1-0.3 cm of the light-illuminable red field 102, severely obscuring the illumination pattern of the light-illuminable red field 102. The second is that there exists no boundary between the light-illuminable red field 102 and the light-illuminable red outer background 103. Most important is the third reason that the light-impenetrable black symbol 101 does not allow light to pass therethrough, and its surroundings including the light-illuminable red field 102 and the light-illuminable red outer background 103 have the same red color, rendering the illumination pattern of the field unrecognizable from the red outer background 103. In essence, similar to the Mercury example, neither the Oldsmobile symbol nor its field is made luminously recognizable on the taillamp cover means 100.
In summary, up to now, none of the available vehicle light systems has being intentionally designed to utilize the existed light sources for the luminous displaying of a vehicle's trademark at the time when its host vehicle is initiated by a driver to perform an action of braking, parking-signalling, hazard-signalling, turn-signalling, driving, reverse-driving, or door-opening.